Members of the Senate are rushing for the exits in the wake of the Internet's unprecedented protest of the Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. In a particularly severe blow for Hollywood, at least five of the newly-opposed Senators were previously co-sponsors of the Protect IP Act. (Update: since we ran this story, the tally is up to 18 Senators, of which seven are former co-sponsors. See below.)

The newly-opposed Senators are skewed strongly to the Republican side of the aisle. An Ars Technica survey of Senators' positions on PIPA turned up only two Democrats, Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who announced their opposition on Wednesday. The other 11 Senators who announced their opposition on Wednesday were all Republicans. These 13 join a handful of others, including Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who have already announced their opposition.

Marco Rubio, a freshman Republican Senator from Florida who some consider to be a rising star, withdrew his co-sponsorship of the bill, citing "legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet." He urged the Senate to "avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences."...MORE...LINK-------------------------

Some 7,000 websites went dark Wednesday to protest the the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a law that would give the government more power to censor the Internet in service to corporations. The protests appear to have had an impact, and have caused several co-sponsors of to come out opposed to the bill.

In fact, it looks like the Senate version, called PIPA, is effectively dead at this point, with 13 Senators announcing their opposition today alone. Among the 13 were five of the bill’s co-sponsors.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), one of the primary corporate backers of SOPA, lashed the public protests against it, with former Sen. Chris Dodd (D – CT), the current MPAA Chairman, insisting protests by private websites fearing censorship amounted to an “abuse of power.”...MORE...LINK